Chinese President Hu arrives for 3-day France visit

Nov 4, 2010, 14:33 GMT

Paris - Chinese President Hu Jintao arrived Thursday for a three-day visit to France expected to focus on international economic issues and to produce huge business deals for French industry.

Hu - freshly dubbed as the world's most powerful man by the US business magazine Forbes - was welcomed at Orly airport by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, with first talks set for later Thursday.

Ahead of the talks, officials said a major topic would be the upcoming Group of 20 (G20) summit in Seoul, where a major issue is the exchange rate of the Chinese currency.

The US and other industrial nations accuse China of keeping the yuan's rate artificially low in order to give Chinese export goods an unfair advantage.

After the initial talks, the two sides are to sign business deals running into the billions of dollars, after reports from Beijing that China was about to order more than 100 Airbus planes in a deal which could be worth up to 10 billion dollars.

Prior to Hu's state visit, there was criticism of the fact that Hu and Sarkozy were not to hold a joint press conference, with media commentators surmising that the two leaders wanted to avoid facing critical questions about China's human rights situation.

In particular, Beijing has angrily protested against the awarding of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to jailed human rights activist Liu Xiaobo.

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